Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Thanks, though, to GimpelTheFool for this excellent poem, posted "in memory of BotFer Claude Scales":

Barrow Street

I will die having walked
down Barrow Street
in New York's light
amidst the smell of coffee
roasting in the morning
past the Paris Bistro
with its red awning

having walked past
Cherry Lane where the
theatre was, and at
its corner, a restaurant
where they served your
vegetables in oval dishes,
Portugese family-style

having walked with salt
on my lips from a breeze
off the Hudson just
a few blocks away,
where liners and warships
made common progress
to their piers uptown.

When I do kick the bucket, I want my surviving friends to throw a big party, and someone has to sing this: